It was close to 17 years ago, within the distance of a well struck goal-kick from the banks of the Suez Canal, that this all began. The date was September 6, 1997 and Spain beat Mexico 3-2 at the FIFA Under 17 World Cup.

Playing together competitively for the first time were Iker Casillas and Xavi Hernandez — the Jagger/ Richards of world football.

No-one who was lucky enough to hear Keith ’n Mick play for the first time, in the Marquee Club, Oxford Street, London back in July 1962, would have guessed that they’d still be filling stadia in summer 2014.

VIDEO Scroll down for highlights of Spain's 2-0 win over El Salvador in final warm-up game

Crossing the great divide: Iker Casillas (left) and Xavi Hernandez are long-standing friends untied by a love of winning

Something similar goes for those who saw the Madrileno keeper and the saturnine Catalan midfielder become team-mates as well as friends in Egypt all those years ago.

And while their friendship — which has unified the Spain squad, helping erase factions and frictions — is a key pillar in La Roja’s historic trophy treble, there’s something else about them.

Clearly these are two of the great footballers of European history. Talented, technically intelligent — leaders. But they both possess a crucial need to keep on winning.

Maybe it’s only the need for the megabucks which a well-run world tour can generate that keeps the Glimmer Twins on the road.

But I doubt that it’s as simple as that. They, too, have a need to compete (with each other), a need to show the world that they can still cut it. And that is at the heart of the challenge facing the Spain of Casillas and Xavi this summer.

Side-by-side: Xavi and Casillas are chasing back-to-back World Cup wins

When their critics talk of Spain being ‘over the hill’ or that this might be ‘one tournament too many’ it’s really Xavi they are talking about.

Others will be quoted — David Villa, Xabi Alonso, Casillas, Fernando Torres — but Villa just won La Liga and made it to the Champions League Final, Alonso won the Copa del Rey and played a massive role in helping Real Madrid become European champions, despite being banned for the final when a silly booking in the semi-final trip blotted what had been an outstanding performance in Munich.

Casillas, too, had a hand in Real’s cup double.

But Xavi is the daddy of the group. Not only 34, but in the creative hot-house which has dug Spain out of so many dodgy situations while teams tried to shut them down or bully them out of games over the last three major tournaments.

The way that he and Andres Iniesta link up down the centre of the pitch has accounted for a host of sumptuous tournament goals — either one of them given an extra inch or two of space and they’ll wriggle and fire off a salvo of passes and that’s that. Spain ahead. Game over.

Nevertheless, for some years (beginning with Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid during the Clasico wars of 2011) teams have decided to harass and try to test Xavi’s athleticism — his will to run.

There’s no denying that this all-time great of our sport is now struggling to put in a full offensive and defensive shift. If an opponent, with or without the ball, runs away from him, then it’s less assured that Xavi will be willing or able to track back and help avoid ‘overload’ on the defence.

Tempus fugit — time flies — but it always has. Every great footballer has confronted this sudden draining of super powers.

A magical journey: Casillas hoists the World Cup aloft four years ago as Spain capped their dominance of the global game

It’s how to cope, how to combat it, how to slow down time’s rusting process which counts.Even back in Euro 2012, Xavi felt the scythe. If not of Father Time himself then of the critics, mostly Spanish it has to be said, who felt his influence had declined.

The matches chafed for Xavi, he was irked at being sniped at and still more narked that he felt he wasn’t putting his mark on games.

Casillas’s challenges have been many, but not identical. It’s famous that his iron-clad individuality saw him stand up to, and clash with, Mourinho — to the extent that he was (unfairly) dropped.

That was the tributary which led to a cascade; his place with Spain might have been in jeopardy given Carlo Ancelotti’s decision to maintain Diego Lopez (not even at this tournament) as Madrid’s No 1.

Plenty to ponder: Casillas and Jose Mourinho did not see eye-to-eye

Some Madrid fans demonised him as the anti-Mourinho ring leader — he’s thought about leaving the club.

But guys like these two know how to deal with adversity. There they were, if you cared to look, sat side by side on a bench at the side of the training pitch in Washington in midweek.

They sat for 15 minutes talking about this and that, mostly that, while the rest of the squad did their thing. Two ‘veteran’ warriors. Planning the assault to come.

And this
is the nub of the thing. Around the world people are desperate to write
about the end of an era — the football decrepitude which ‘apparently’
is about to engulf Spain.

While
sporting obituaries are being written in advance of any actual
fatality, Spain’s ‘vets’ are obsessed by only one thing — not their
legacy, not the €700,000 bonus which allegedly they stand to win.

Instead
they are obsessed with repeating the triumph, becoming the first
country to retain this title since Brazil did it in 1962. Part of that
has to do with their characters. Xavi pondered international retirement
two years ago in Ukraine, before winning the Euros, and told Vicente
del Bosque so.

The
manager said to him: ‘Are you crazy? Are you in a depression?’ — and
challenged Xavi to have a tilt at winning the most famous trophy in the
world in the country most associated with doing just that thing. The
Pentacampeons of Brazil.

Earlier this year, Luis Aragones, Spain’s former national coach, died. It was the old bear, El Sabio De Hortaleza, who knew best how to harness the powers of Casillas and Xavi. It wasn’t him who set them off in Egypt all those years ago but, when he inherited them, he knew that this was an axis of greatness. Two men upon whom he could build a dream era — the captain-keeper and the champion-creator.

On their will to win, their friendship, their ability to unify disparate talents, El Sabio constructed a football family — like-minded, similar DNA, a spread of ages.

Old friends: Xavi and Casillas take some time out from training to ponder yet another successful World Cup

He had many phrases, and they are repeated. Torres admitted this week: ‘Not a day goes past in this squad where one of his sayings or an anecdote about him isn’t re-told. It’s like he’s still with us.’One became a favourite of the players: ‘El dueño de la pelota es dueño del juego,’ — whoever dominates the ball, dominates the game.

More now than ever that will work for Spain. This climate doesn’t give a premium for those who run around chasing possession.

Step forward Xavi, still capable of keeping and using the football with precision and consistency.But it’s the other Aragones phrase which I think might allow Spain to surprise their critics and early obituary writers.

He told his troops: ‘Ganar y ganar y ganar...’ — win, win, win. He made them shed the nicey-nicey stuff, the ‘we are not worthy’ and he made them tremendously hard-nosed.

He made this Spain group believe that winning wasn’t something, it was everything.

Driving force: Xavi (right) is the heartbeat of this Spain side even at the age of 34

What many forget is that the phrase had an extension. He used it, famously, in one of those press conferences which made him extra famous. Thumping his closed fist on the desk in front of him he said that it was all about ‘ganar y ganar y ganar’ but then he added ‘y volver a ganer, y ganar y ganar,’— win, win, win and then go back and win, win, win again.

That’s the spirit he encountered in Casillas and Xavi and, 17 years on, that’s what they are here in Brazil to do. Write La Roja off at your peril.